Ghosts
by iminyjo
Summary: The collapse of the Prison leaves Michonne, the perennial loner, flying solo once again. Or is she? *COMPLETE* PLEASE NOTE: I have NOT added any new material to this. I have just changed the format into multiple chapters because it needed it.
1. Chapter 1

Michonne pawed at the dirt trying to get at the thing before it slipped away.

 _They were slippery little buggers on their home turf._

She hadn't accounted for that in her rationing. For every three or four she assumed she'd find, she only actually caught one.

The odds would have been in her favor if it had rained recently, driving them all to the surface but there hadn't been a lick of precipitation in at least a week- which was another issue all together.

"Ha!" She actually said out loud to herself as she wrangled a long fat one out of the top soil and popped it into her mouth.

It was undeniably disgusting. She knew this as she ate but honestly it was not all that much worse than the stale gummy worms that she'd found a few days ago in an abandoned knapsack at the side of the road. In fact, the real worms were decidedly chewier and not the same sickly sweet.

But she was in it for the protein anyway not the taste. Daryl had sworn to her these suckers were rich in protein.

Still, if you had told her a month ago that she'd be on her hands and knees digging earthworms out of the dirt she'd have laughed in your face. At the Prison, food hadn't been precisely _abundant_ but there'd been enough to go around and once the gardens were really bearing their bounty there promised to be more.

It was hard to believe that had been only three weeks ago.

It was already starting to feel like a lifetime to Michonne. Much in the same way that Mike and Andre had been so far gone as to seem like they were the recollections of another person or characters from a book she'd once read. Not really connected to her, not connected to now. They had become hazy. The loss still burned bright but everything else about them had grown soft around the edges. The Prison was starting to feel like that now too.

She sat back on her haunches and sighed. _She was thinking about them again._

Her boyfriend and son. Not only them either, now there were others as well: Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Glenn…the roll call grew longer all the time. This is exactly why she had always chosen to travel light. Travel alone. Attaching her life to nothing and no one for so long. Then she'd found Andrea alone in the woods, and suddenly her life cracked open again.

 _…_ _dammit._

Michonne shook her head, wiping away unbidden tears.

 _You gotta stop._ She could almost hear Daryl's voice telling her.

She had to stop recalling people and places and things now lost to her forever. All alone, she was already spinning out. The crying was a sign of that. Even when that bastard Merle shot her, she hadn't cried. Crying –when she needed to retain all the hydration she could manage—it was stupid.

"Stop it!" She chided herself again, coaxing another of those slimy devils from their home.

So quickly, she had already been reduced to scavenging worms and grubs the way Daryl had taught her. She was lucky she'd half-listened when he told her how. Back when she'd been on her own before, she had lived on any junk she could find: stale candy, crazy cheese, cupcake snacks that supposedly could survive a nuclear winter, potato chips, really anything she could find that purported to be edible. But that wouldn't do this time around. Her food had to be more nutritious. And she had to be more conscientious about what she consumed…which was a huge joke, considering the circumstances.

There was almost nothing left anywhere to find that wasn't growing directly out of the soil. That was, of course, because the Prison group had already rather thoroughly cleaned out all the surrounding homes and businesses within at least twenty-five miles in every direction long before she'd even arrived there. It was ridiculous of her to think nearly a year later that there would have been anything by way of food to find nearby. Yet she knew she didn't dare go too far afield.

Not for a while at least.

* * *

"You sure you're okay with this?"

"I've lost my leg, Michonne, not my sense of decorum. How would it look if I stood here and watched you work?" Hershel asked good-naturedly as Michonne dragged more bodies off the truck and onto the pile.

"I'm more concerned about how it'll look to Maggie and Beth that I have their father beyond the fences doing hard labor." Michonne said straightening up briefly to look at the older man and wipe the gleaming perspiration from her brow.

She smiled at him.

Life still, after all this time, had an incredible sense of irony. She would not have expected to fall into such immediate kinship with this silver-haired older man and his gentle, lilting voice. Particularly given how they'd met—with her deliberately withholding the missing puzzle-piece in his daughter and son-in-law's abduction. It was a minor miracle that they now spoke to each other at all. Although to be fair to herself, no one had been on their best behavior that day.

"Remember, I was a farmer first." Hershel added. "Hard-labor is all in a day's work for me since childhood."

Michonne nodded, granting him that. "Well, I'm almost done anyway. You can help me light 'em up."

"Sure thing." He said, moving away from the flatbed of the truck he'd been leaning against. He shuffled a little on his prosthetic leg. "But I suspect it's not in that capacity that you asked me out here anyway. Am I right?"

The smile fell from Michonne's lips and lines worried her forehead. She nodded reluctantly. She should have known he would see right through her request for help. She rarely solicited help from anyone, ever.

Hershel brought the red gas canisters with him handing her one as he took the other to the pile of walkers. For better or for worse, he was about to be the first person she told. She needed to figure out where she was planning to start and why suddenly Hershel felt less like her friend and more like her confessor?

"Don't worry, kid. You can start whenever you're ready." He said presciently. "It's just you and me out here."

Michonne nearly chuckled now. Nearly.

 _How had it been possible to be so fabulously wrong at that precise moment?_

They had most definitely not been alone out there that day, as they'd soon both find out. In the forty or so-odd days since Michonne wondered.

 _How could she have been so stupid? So complacent?_

She'd let the illness that burned its way through the Prison's population convince her that her time was better spent at home. She let fear and concern for her friends outweigh the importance of looking for The Governor. So then, of course he'd come looking for her. _Looking for them all, really._

He'd been out there. _Right out there, on their doorstep...waiting._

Sometimes, she still had nightmares about it. In them, again she was turning, only minutes later to find herself face to face with The Governor's gun butt. And again and again waking, who knows how long after that, to find herself bound in the back of his RV with Hershel trussed up beside her.

 _You led my Daddy outside the gates to his death._ Maggie's ghost accused her in the worst moments.

Nowadays, all Michonne's dreams were nightmares but this one was still the most often recurring one.

She trudged along trying to shake the guilt of those thoughts loose without actually shaking her head. Right now, she couldn't make any sudden movements. She had fallen in with a small herd and she didn't need to call attention to herself. She'd seamlessly blended in as they made their way through a small town, so that she could scope it out unmolested. She was tugging Spot and Fido along with her —that's what she called her pets, the ones that she'd taken to help camouflage herself.

It had been her plan that "Spot" should be The Governor.

She'd looped a special hogtie especially for him, fantasizing about how good it would feel to cut off his limbs and jaw, maybe poke his other eye out. She'd very nearly cried later when she discovered someone had come behind her to put a bullet in his skull, allowing him to rest in peace. His subjugation, even in death, was to have been her prize, the one single reward she could wrest from all the subsequent agony.

 _And someone robbed you of it._ Glenn commiserated in her head. Michonne knew he had wanted to kill The Governor too, once upon a time.

She couldn't help feeling cheated. In the end, she'd had to settle for that asshole in the tank after she found him wandering around with a gaping hole in his sternum. She remembered him too, with his shit-eating grin, waiting as Rick nearly broke under the weight of The Governor's ultimatum. She remembered him, as she remembered all the faces of The Governor's people. People who had just stood idly by as he nearly took Hershel's head off his shoulders right beside her.

Those faces she still recalled clearly even days later, when she made her way back to the Prison. At the time, the air was still thick with smoke though it had already burned for nearly four days. But she'd returned when she thought it was safe enough, hoping against hope to find survivors or supplies or both.

Michonne hadn't been foolish enough to go back into the structure itself, which by then had been overrun for days and was clearly a deathtrap. But she had skirted the perimeter a number of times until the herds cleared sufficiently to enter onto the grounds. There she did what she could, putting down any unfortunate Woodbury refugees she encountered and gathering what items she could find.

That's where she'd found Hershel's reanimated head… and The Governor's lifeless body. The injustice of that dichotomy gnawed at her still. As did Judith's bloodied infant carrier—the image of which still had the power to stagger her even all these weeks later.

…and it did.

* * *

Michonne missed a step stumbling forward, as if over the unwanted memory. Fido and Spot looked on placidly as she righted herself but unfortunately she'd done enough to alert Roberta, Carlos and Regina—she'd taken to naming her walker companions—of her presence among them. With a heavy sigh, Michonne kicked the walker nearest to her down and calmly pulled her katana out of its sheath on her shoulder. In one fluid arcing motion, she dispatched Regina and Carlos, then she stabbed Roberta straight through the eye socket. Pirouetting to her left, she took off Ted's neck and shoulder, then Francis' skull came clean off his body. This herd was only about twelve or so deep. So she could have killed them all with her eyes closed.

And she very nearly did. She wasn't sure where this new self-destructive impulse was coming from. The recklessness. She just knew the loneliness was wearing on her in a way it never had before.

 _Why was she even continuing to bother?_ She wondered more and more often. Looking at the felled bodies and various body parts strewn about her feet, she despaired. _What was the point, if she was destined to be alone?_

But before that thought was even fully formed in her mind, she knew the answer.

… _Because you're not alone, not really. That's why._ Rick's voice whispered her.


	2. Chapter 2

Although Michonne would never be able to be 100% positive, especially not now, not in this world, she was pretty sure it had happened that very first night.

"Michonne, wait up a minute!" A voice called from behind her.

Michonne knew it was Rick, jogging toward her before she even turned around.

 _There was a countrified guy if she'd ever heard one._ She thought suddenly, as amused with her own smugness as she was with his thick Georgia drawl.

Even if they hadn't told her almost immediately upon her arrival, Michonne would have guessed that Rick was a small town sheriff just by looking at him. From his erect posture and the way he cocked his head to the side and put his hand on his gun belt as he spoke, seemingly sizing everyone and everything up, to the ingratiating "aw shucks" way he acted that totally belied his deeply calculating mind. Everything about him had just basically screamed he was a "good old boy" cop.

And though she caught herself still thinking it now, watching him walk toward her, as she'd thought it then when they'd first met, squaring off against each other, Michonne knew none of that had any place in their new reality. She'd come to realize quickly they didn't come any better than Rick Grimes. So even months later, she still felt some bit of regret for how uncharitable her early thoughts and feelings about him had been. She was surprised that still after all this time, she could so easily revert back to the more effete, ostensibly "cosmopolitan" judgments of her past life.

The real fundamental truth of their new existence was that those days were quite literally dead and gone. All those beloved cities that she thought were so great, and such important cultural-hubs were now filled with the exact same reanimate dead as the so-called "fly-over" states and backwaters she'd once disdained. And in this type of world, the new world, it was a guy precisely like Rick that you needed protecting your flank. It had taken her a couple months to recognize it but now it was as obvious to her as the nose on her face.

"Hey," she said smiling as he caught up finally. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to thank you again for the shaver."

"But still haven't used it yet, I see."

"Well," he said looking away at something beyond her.

He was doing that sexy, "aw shucks" thing again. She'd noticed over these months there was far more method to that than he ever let on.

"Afraid the guys won't let you stay in the 'He-man Woman-Haters Club' if you expose those soft cheeks and look like you're nineteen again?"

That was just meant as a joke. But he looked back at her suddenly in a way that revealed perhaps she'd hit far closer to the mark than she'd realized.

Michonne had always suspected there was a handsome guy underneath the growing neck beard and squirrel fur covering his face. His piercing pool blue eyes, square jaw and patrician nose all told that tale. But currently, he was moving more and more steadily into mountain man territory. She had hoped to head that off at the pass if she could. So earlier in the week, she'd come back from a run with an electric shaver specifically for him. And though at the time he'd looked at it as if he didn't know which end was up, she'd been confident that he'd use it.

 _That was days ago._

"Look, if you need to keep your face warm for the upcoming winter, Grizzly Adams, that's cool." Michonne laughed feeling naughty for not letting him off the hook.

His face reddened as he looked at a spot on the ground before slowly bringing his eyes back up to her face.

 _It was his own fault. He'd brought it up._ She thought, mischievously enjoying his discomfort.

"Well," he said again, rubbing the back of his neck and squinting at her as if, even in the low light of dusk, she was backlit by a brilliant sun. "The truth is, I do have a baby face."

Michonne couldn't help the wide smile that broke out across her face, straining her cheeks.

Rick got redder, rubbing his bearded cheek with his knuckles as he struggled to say what it was he wanted to say.

"…'baby' as in sensitive. Honestly, my skin's too sensitive for an electric shaver. I can only use a straight razor." Michonne noticed his accent got noticeably thicker as he went on. He was trying to disarm her with that Southern charm of his.

She covered her mouth with three fingers, trying not to laugh.

"I use one of those thangs and in a day, my cheeks'll look like I got diaper rash like Judith."

She erupted, she couldn't help it. "Rick, why didn't you just say something?"

He shook his head sheepishly and shrugged as she laughed at him.

"It was really thoughtful of you to bring it. I just didn't want you to think I didn't appreciate it. I did. And I thank you for the treats and thangs you bring back for Corl and the clothes and stuff you get Judith."

He cocked his head to the side and brought his voice down to a near whisper. "I… appreciate everything you've done for us in the last few months, Michonne. I really do."

"I know." Michonne said simply, sobering up under his intensifying gaze. Heat rushed to her face making her feel suddenly flush too. Like he'd put her on the spot now.

 _Had it been her imagination or had he gotten closer too?_ She wondered as it seemed what had previously been an arm's length between them had halved.

"You do?" Rick asked simply. Though suddenly, it seemed like he was asking a whole other question. His eyes searched her face, as palpable as any caress.

"Mmm-hmm." She nodded reassuringly…to both questions.

"Good." He said.

"C'mon." She told him turning slowly back in the direction she'd been going, up toward the prison. He came alongside, falling into step with her quickly.

"You really should have told me, you know. I have a straight razor."

"You do?" he asked again.

"Yep." She gave him a sidelong glance and a slight smile. "…And I give an incredibly close shave."

"I've seen you with that sword…I bet you do."

Michonne was surprised that alone in the woods forging all these months later the memory of later that night still had the power to make her blush.

Rick didn't get his shave that night, or any night thereafter. But Michonne had certainly gotten something else. A shiver ran through her fatigued body as she thought about it, about him.

* * *

She'd always thought that the best time for regrets was before things happened. That just a little forethought negated the need for any regrets at all. Not that she could or would really say she regretted her relationship with Rick. But what she could say was that she should have known better. They should have known to be more careful.

Her beloved Andre had been conceived very similarly… _She was just that fertile_.

That had been her and Mike's private little joke about it at the time. They'd barely finished discussing the idea of a baby before Andre was already taking up residence in Michonne's womb. It had happened while on vacation. Just after they'd celebrated their big decision by tossing her birth control in the drink and watching the pills float away on the evening tide. Then back in their real life, she'd made an appointment to get a clean bill of health and instead gotten the happy news.

 _She just got knocked up really easily._ That was all there was to it. Who could have imagined that one day that would be a major liability?

So now, here she was again, but this time a ticking time bomb. Just four short months before she was strapped with her very own personal walker magnet. Never mind all the ways in which it was already slowing her down. She hated the fact that she saw it like that. When she thought about it, she wished the idea brought with it feelings of joy or hope, feelings similar to the ones she'd had about her son. But now she could only see all the ways in which it was a liability. A weakness she didn't need and a burden she couldn't unload.

"How'd you do it?" She wondered aloud.

Being alone again now she had far more people to talk to than before. The benefits of friendship, she imagined. She didn't just have her boyfriend Mike anymore. In her moments of disquiet, she spoke to Hershel, Daryl, Andrea… Rick. Though she still wasn't sure they were all dead, they might as well have been. She knew better than to imagine she'd ever see them again, and yet they haunted her like ghosts. Still surprisingly, she found that the one person she spoke with most, whose counsel she most wished to have was the one person she'd never actually met in the first place.

 _Rick's wife, Lori._

The woman whose memory had loomed so large in the Prison, having just died right before Michonne arrived. She left a huge void in the lives of her son, new daughter and husband. A void that Michonne had worried she was on the verge of getting sucked into. She had been a loner by both circumstance and choice, but suddenly to have this boy, Carl, looking up to her with admiration and his father seeking her out for counsel? It had proven seductive. She didn't want to care for them even as more and more she did. For so long Michonne had avoided touching the little girl—it was too much like Andre to bear – that she now felt almost like she owned Lori a profound apology. She should have held Judith for as long and as often as her caretakers would allow. Unfortunately for Michonne, the same should not have been said about Lori's husband.

 _Lori._

Michonne had never even laid eyes on the woman. She was merely a picture her son kept in a frame, and yet Michonne could conjure her vividly. Nearly as vividly, she imagined, as Rick had done once upon a time. That had been one of the things they'd bonded over originally. The way their ghosts kept them company, lingering forever on the periphery of their lives. Now Lori was here for her too. She wondered at the irony.

Walking these roads alone Michonne asked often, had Lori seen Judith's birth as the potential death sentence it was? That it had proven to be? Would she have made a different choice if she could? Lori's circumstances had been optimal in comparison to what Michonne's were shaping up to be and still she'd lost her life in childbirth. Did Michonne have any right to wish for better? She was alone and in two straight months of looking had yet to find a place safe enough to settle.

Some neighborhoods were emptier than others…but those were the ones that had been cleaned out the most thoroughly. Heavily infested enclaves still had some supplies but every time she entered, she ran the real risk of never leaving again. Going more than fifty miles from the Prison in any direction save back toward Atlanta was a no-go, Michonne had decided early on. She couldn't risk entering entirely uncharted territory. She didn't know how to make this all work out. And for as much as she asked, Lori was no help, and neither were any of the others for that matter. The one thing she did know, though, was that traveling deep into the country, alone and heavily pregnant was without question, ill-advised.

 _No,_ she concurred with the dead woman in her head, _she would have to stick around the surrounding counties until she gave birth and was more mobile._

Still, making a plan and executing it were two different things. Michonne realized this as she added the small wild onion to her meager sack of food. As her food stores dwindled, she had come to see this more and more every day.


	3. Chapter 3

_Good God, girl, you got to lose a little weight._ Michonne thought hoisting herself up.

Michonne imagined Carol teasingly whispering in her ear. _Sure, why don't you go on a diet._

She chuckled at the irony. She didn't know when last she'd eaten a full meal not comprised of some mixture of junk food, herbaceous wild plants and edible insects. Her clothes were getting loose everywhere but in her mid-section.

Still at six months pregnant now, getting over the counter at a small pharmacy quietly was harder than it had been a couple months earlier. …Especially when loaded down not only with child but in an oversized men's trench coat. She also carried a small lantern, five yards of heavy braided jute rope, a half full water jug, a tarp, shovel, a few precious cans of long forgotten S'getti Rings and an entire large bottle of rot gut whiskey that she wasn't sure exactly what she intended to do with in her condition. It was all shoved into a hikers' backpack that itself was relatively heavy.

She knew she was going to have to stop and pick a place soon. She grew more and more fatigued as the days progressed. A scouting trip from neighborhood to neighborhood that once took her a couple hours was now eating up whole chunks of her days. The overnight accommodations in various car trunks along the roads were getting tighter and more claustrophobic as time passed too. Plus, there was the dual problem of her center of gravity changing and her growing breasts getting in the way when she wielded her katana. It hadn't quite become a problem yet but she could hardly wait until it did.

Easing the pack off her shoulders as silently as she could manage and placing it by the register, Michonne moved toward the darkened dispensary with her sword drawn. She tapped the blade lightly against one of the shelves to coax anything lurking within the shadows toward the light. Listening closely, she heard movement and backed up quickly.

It grumbled with what was left of its vocal cords from somewhere inside the room as Michonne readied herself. To account for the minimal fighting space behind the counter and her now soccer ball-sized paunch, she lowered her stance, bending more at the knee with one leg slightly in front of the other. Something moved again from deep within the room as she braced herself.

 _Careful now, there may be more than one thang in there._ Rick's voice warned.

She listened to even more rumbling, at least one something inside crashed to the ground and shattered.

 _The hell was taking 'em so long?_ Daryl's spectre said testily.

If there was one thing that had stayed constant between her last pregnancy and this one, it was that her fuse was quite a bit shorter. Her blood ran a little hotter. _She did not have time for this._ The amount of time the sun spent in the sky was getting noticeably shorter by the day. _This standing outside waiting was some annoying bullshit._

 _But you gotta wait outside, it's not safe._ Glenn, ever the judicious one, cautioned.

She sighed. Then tapped the doorframe harder, this time making absolutely sure the walker inside knew in which direction to head.

"C'mon, I haven't got all day." She said aloud finally breaking the silence and tension of waiting. She missed the days when she could just take point through a door confident that one of the guys was at her back.

* * *

"I got it." Michonne said stepping away from the group as the first of a stream of walkers emptied out of the broken plate glass window.

She cut two down in seconds as one of Daryl's arrows whizzed by her, striking one she hadn't seen in time between the eyes. "I got you, girl."

Michonne paused only briefly to register what he said and nod before she got back to the business of hacking at two more that were also getting too close.

There had been a lot of discussion and strategizing over the course of days on how they would tackle the Food Outlet. It was a big-box food store on the outskirts of a town nearly two hours away from the Prison that had become like the Holy Grail to the group. Everyone knew of the store, even among the Woodbury group and the random strangers they'd taken in. But no one knew what was still in it. They were now trying to find out.

"Maggie, careful!" Glenn said as he plowed through two more with his large serrated-edge knife while his fearless girlfriend grabbed a tall, putrid woman by the strap of her cross-body purse and stabbed her through the septum.

For as long as anyone could remember, so going on about a year, the parking lot of the store had been overrun with walkers. At some point, it must have been someone's bright idea to use the store as a refuge much like the Prison, but obviously something had gone terribly wrong. Now scores of walkers roved around the parking lot, while unknown numbers lay within. None of the creatures were able to leave, however, because they were trapped by a large fence that had only one narrow exit. Much like flies unable to relocate the exit once they'd entered, the walkers had just wandered the huge parking lot ever since.

"No guns if we can help it!" Rick reminded the group when it looked like Tyreese's sister Sasha was squaring up to take a line of walkers down with her AR 15. Instead, she brought the muzzle down from her eye-level and drove the whole thing through the decomposed eye cavity of a walker bearing down on her.

With the introduction of the Woodbury residents, the fragile resources of the prison were greatly strained. It was finally decided that a group would have to try and "liberate" the store. But even that had been a process Michonne was vaguely impatient with. She understood the need for caution. Her personal belief being that nothing done well was done on impulse, but the back and forth decision-making required among the Council had worn on her nerves. Every bit as much as it had on Rick's, who had been waiting for the go ahead all along. In the end, it was to be a multi-day endeavor that required the emptying out of the lot first before anyone got to the building, but get to it they eventually did.

"Michonne, hey…" Rick tapped her lightly on the shoulder to get her attention. They'd been battling the onslaught for a good twenty minutes when there was finally a substantial break in the stream of walkers out of the building.

With ribbons of adrenaline still coursing through her, Michonne turned on him quickly, looking at the place he'd touched her then up at him sharply. He stepped back, giving her space just as fast. It was unlikely that either of them had forgotten but they had reached a largely unspoken agreement since the day they'd first met. A détente really, in which a strict hands-off policy was paramount.

"Yeah?" She said impatiently, eyeing the exit for more slow-moving stragglers.

Honestly, she wasn't upset with him. Not really, Michonne was just revved up, doing the one thing she had become expert at. It had been a long time since she'd been in this sort of melee, where she could dispense largely with her conscious mind and just send dozens of these creatures to hell where they belonged. Living with people again she had fewer and fewer opportunities to unleash the monster within her. She breathed deep, trying to stuff it back in its cage. It was going to take her a moment to will herself back into neutral.

"You know, you don't always have to be first through the door. We share that duty." Rick advised after a long moment of watching her.

Michonne looked around, instead of at him. Daryl cleaned his arrow tips on his pant legs, while Maggie checked Glenn for nicks and scratches. The others of their group quietly watched the darkened breach for more comers. Yet despite that, Michonne had no doubt everyone there stood listening. She pulled herself erect, finally having composed herself. She balanced her katana on the blade edge and looked squarely at Rick.

"…I know you're good with that sword but you don't have anything to prove to us. We can handle ourselves too." He continued, relatively gently.

Michonne took another deep breath before saying anything. With the exception of Tyreese, Sasha and a young kid named Zach, she supposed she was one of the newest members of their little "away" group. It was entirely possible that she still needed to get the hang of this group's dynamics, of this group at all. She pushed down any rude comment she might have thought to make.

"I'm sure you can, Rick." She said softly, trying to remain tactful. "But you see, I'm not just showing off."

It was Rick's turn to straighten, putting his hand on his hip. His eyes, squinting, were riveted to her face.

"...My blade from grip to point gives me almost three comfortable feet of clearance before anything: man, woman or beast is close enough to touch me. Whereas I'd say you have," she eyed his favored hatchet, gripped in his right hand. "Maybe about a foot and a half to two feet, so basically an arm's length… _if_ you don't choke up on the handle."

Michonne saw as Sasha exchanged a raised eyebrow and smile with her brother then took a swig of his water before they both turned back toward the store window. Maggie walked over to check on Zach. And Glenn cleared his throat as Daryl became very interested in gnawing at something on the side of his thumb. She saw on Rick's face that he noticed it also. How suddenly everyone was very conspicuously minding their own business.

He chuckled more to himself than her, shaking his head and checking his grip on his hatchet before saying, "Okay, fair enough. Just know, we got your back."

* * *

 _It was true. It had been true._

Michonne knew it as she stood silently outside the doorway to the dispensary. It wasn't fair to the memory of Rick or frankly anyone else that she now felt abandoned. They would be with her if they could.

 _She knew that._

Still, it didn't stop her from feeling it. In all these months since the attack, she had yet to encounter more people from the Prison, alive or dead. That had to mean at least some of them had survived, were still alive, didn't it? …Or was it just that they'd all been killed irrevocably and their corpses lay rotting in the dirt somewhere?

The noise grew louder in the darkness of the dispensary. Something rattled along the floor. _A bottle with pills, maybe?_ Se thought hopefully. Even if it was a male performance enhancer, at this point, she was certain she could find use for it.

Suddenly, a fast-moving, large, round, dark blur emerged from the darkness straight at her feet, swerving to the right just as it reached her ankle. Michonne lurched left and yelped, turning to see it just as the furry ball ran under the counter, down the aisle and out the hole she'd made in the bottom of the front door.

A raccoon!

Michonne cursed herself for letting two nights' dinner get past her. She slumped in abject frustration.

Just then, a hard grip came down on her foot, grabbing her by the ankle and pulling it out from under her. She came down hard on her hip and wrist attempting to break her fall. Her katana skittered away from her hand, end sliding past end across the linoleum floor. The walker on the floor at her feet reached a fetid hand out to pull her to him. He was formerly a large man, evident from the excess of rotted flesh and the strength his corpse still possessed. He might have easily overpowered her had he not been on the floor prone.

With her free foot, Michonne kicked out at his head. Half the skin of his face sloughed off on the sole of her boot but his grip continued unabated. Michonne now saw the tourniquet and the needle sticking out of his right arm. A man who finished himself off with a needle in the back of a pharmacy or a junkie so blinded by his addiction that even the end of the world couldn't keep him from his last fix?

 _Did it even matter?_ Andrea asked her urgently. She claimed to be amazed Michonne still asked such questions.

Michonne scrambled kicking repeatedly with her right foot while she reflexively protected her stomach with her left arm. Fighting through the pain, she flailed with her right arm for anything she could find at her fingertips. Her katana was too far away and the walker used her foot as leverage to drag itself out of the darkness of the dispensary. Panic spread through her body like an injection of ice water, freezing capillaries and veins as the fear traveled from the extremity the thing gripped up her body toward her brain. Its dirty teeth snapped frantically at her as she kicked it repeatedly.

 _Focus, Michonne!_ Andrea's voice filled her mind.

Michonne's lame right hand had reached back wildly for something, anything that could be used to fend it off. If it managed to either wrench her shoe off her foot or clear her ankle where the boot ended, the game would be over. She cried out involuntarily and her hand got tangled in cords under the counter. At first, she attempted to free herself before rational thought returned.

Using what strength she had left in that hand she pulled all the things attached to the cords down on herself. She braced herself and her belly as it rained down a keyboard, mouse and barcode reader first. Something heavier teetered on the edge of the counter above her. Praying it wasn't the computer screen or a cash register, she yanked it down while giving the relentless thing at her foot another glancing blow to the cranium.

The item above fell finally, hitting her hard on the way down. It bounced off her cheek and jaw with an impact that stunned her momentarily, but fortunately it wasn't the till. It was a push button version of the old, rotary-style telephones with a receiver and corded handset that also hit her hard in the sternum. She could have cried from both the pain and relief.

Grabbing the large heavy base she sat up and clocked the walker with it. Had it been alive it would have been staggered. As it was, the first blow only cracked the thing's orbital socket, crushing what was left of its nose. The inner workings of the phone trilled madly as she beat the thing's skull repeatedly. Again and again, above the increasing protestation of her right wrist, fueled by adrenaline, she brought the weighty phone down on the walker until all that was left of its head were skull fragments and bloody clumps of hair.

Self-preservation had kept her from screaming and potentially alerting other walkers in the street. Yet, she discovered her throat was dry and her voice hoarse as she dragged herself gingerly to her feet. Limping on a twisted left ankle, she tried to pick up her katana when her right wrist cried out in agony. If she hadn't broken it in the fall, at the very least she'd sprained it badly. Michonne wiped her face with the back of her trembling, bloodied hand and discovered she'd been crying. Not for herself. For her child and the danger she'd put them in.

 _It was time_ , she realized.

After months of searching and waiting, she had to pick some place. Like the mama bear Carl had once upon a time teased her about being, it was time for her to finally pick a safe den to hole up in for the season and wait this out. Her supply stores still weren't where she wanted them to be. But she'd been foraging for months now, stashing her reserves all over like an overgrown squirrel. She wasn't completely confident in any of the contender homes she'd chosen to possibly reside in. And her comic book collection was still woefully inadequate. But now being functionally lame and still out in the open was a liability.

 _She needed to stop being out here._

Grabbing her katana in her left hand, where her skill was serviceable if not really great, she went into the dispensary. She prayed after all her trouble there was actually something inside to be had. Thirty minutes later, Michonne limped out of the drugstore with a 32-ounce container of chewable children's vitamins, bottles of both witch hazel and povidone iodine, and enough tongue depressors and gauze to fashion a decent splint for her wrist. The bonus that made the whole ordeal worthwhile though was a whole box of Big Kats that the pharmacist had apparently kept stashed in the back of his filing cabinet.


	4. Chapter 4

The pain started on November 17th, a Thursday, in the morning.

Michonne had been keeping up with the date on an old calendar she swiped from a nail salon. Her baby was gonna need a birth date and she'd be damned if she would have been able to provide one without the two-year-old poster from Most Excellent Nails and Beauty Supply Emporium. Time had slowed to a dull, unending loop by that day. So at first, she thought the pain might be a by-product of deciding to sleep on the cold, hard, wooden floor of the crawl space in attic of the house she'd chosen to live in. She'd been sleeping up there instead of on a bed in one of the four bedrooms downstairs, since she arrived. But after months of sleeping in an overturned prison bus, a prison cot and then in car trunks alongside the road, Michonne couldn't take a bed. It was far too soft and a whole bedroom was too exposed for her to rest comfortably. The one time she'd tried, she'd lain awake for hours staring alternately between the ceiling and the bedroom door.

Michonne had a routine every day. Something to give her house arrest some small sense of structure and prevent her from losing her mind. She got up an hour after sunrise. Folded up her palette and came into the attic proper. There, she checked the water supply that she was siphoning from rain gutters she'd deliberately plugged up. After exercising for an hour, which had recently come to mean more stretching than any of the one handed push-ups she used to do, she would finally descend into the rest of the house.

Despite being undoubtedly safe there, having thoroughly disposed of not only the walkers and corpses that were there but also in neighboring houses, Michonne felt very vulnerable downstairs. She always wore her katana slung across her shoulder, even when she was just in the kitchen boiling water over the small barbecue grill she'd dragged inside from the backyard or grabbing more books from the shelves in the den. Every day was monotonously the same. And everything that day had gone as the previous thirty-five before it had. So she had thought it odd that morning when the boards became a sudden problem. Still, she went about her day as usual even while her back ached intensely.

By evening, however, the pains had gotten so strong there was no denying what they really were.

"Baby, it's too soon." She spoke directly to her stomach as she had taken to doing, rubbing it soothingly. By her accounting, she still had at least a month to go.

Giving birth alone to a premature and underweight baby in addition to all the other disadvantages they would face seemed painfully unfair, even in a world as desolate and unremittingly bleak as this one. The fear and doubt snapped at her. It had just started and it was already all going wrong.

 _Oh God, what do I do?_ She beseeched Lori and then anyone that could be listening.

The pain came steadily for hours as Michonne struggled to calm herself and put her plans into motion. She'd chosen the isolated master bath in the back of the house as her birthing room. There she would be relatively free to make noise without attracting any unnecessary attention. Taking from the tub of clean water she'd been amassing for weeks, she used a large stock pot on the grill to boil it and then dragged the heavy pot back upstairs. She laid out the linen and towels across the tile floors, lit the small camping lantern, sat and waited.

 _Everything will be fine._ Lori and Hershel reassured her in unison.

Hours came and went as she rode out the unrelenting waves of pain. She began to worry not only about the child but herself. Labor with Andre had been intense until the blessed epidural kicked in. This was an entirely new, exquisitely painful beast for her. She prayed that they'd both make it through.

"Please!" She pleaded into the silence clutching her sides as a prolonged contraction gripped her body.

"Oh God…"

* * *

"…Rick!" Michonne gasped as intense waves of pleasure coursed through her body.

"Mmmm." He affirmed, smiling down on her.

He brushed a few of her locks out of the way and softly kissed along the line of her clavicle to her shoulder as after-shocks rolled through her making her convulse and grip him tightly. The vise-like hold causing him to tumble over the cliff along side her. She dug her nails into his back as they finished in tandem.

"You good?"

"Mmmm," She smiled, looking into his eyes and nodding. "Very."

Rick slid to her side and fell onto his back with exhaustion. He grabbed his water bottle taking some for himself before passing it to her. Then they lay in a companionable silence until their breathing returned to normal.

Over the months they'd gotten to know each other, besides their newfound sexual chemistry, Michonne and Rick had also discovered they had a rapport that required very few words to get their point across. For some reason, they just understood each other. It had felt odd at first to her.

Though she was far more taciturn now, Michonne had always been a good communicator. She and her boyfriend Mike had discussed everything. They were so on the same wavelength that at times they could finish each other's sentences, much to the disgust of their family and friends. After the world died, Michonne knew that there would never again be another person with whom she was so in sync.

 _And yet here he was._

It wasn't the same, of course. Whereas she and Mike had had similar upbringings and similar cultural milestones that informed their opinions, to the point that they found themselves saying and doing similar things, she and Rick just somehow got each other. They could go whole days in each other's company on a run without saying much of anything. But all they would have to do was look into each other's eyes, watch a facial expression or see each other's posture and it spoke whole volumes.

Michonne looked over at Rick then, with his eyes closed, breathing shallowly with his forearm thrown across his face. He was thinking about something, she could tell. He wasn't asleep. This was one of the relatively rare occasions where he wanted to talk. Somehow she just knew that.

"Rick." She nudged him with her arm.

"Need more room?" He scooted away from her on the narrow bed.

They'd taken to having their assignations in what had previously been the solitary confinement block. The cells had real doors instead of bars, the beds were slightly wider and they were insulated from the blocks where everyone else resided, allowing them to make as much noise as they chose. Still, the accommodations were a far cry from luxurious.

"No," she said turning away from him. She sat up and swung her feet onto the cold concrete floor.

 _She needed to be dressed for this._

"Don't go." He put his hand on her back, running his wide palm down its smooth expanse to her waist.

Michonne almost shuddered. That too was inexplicable. How she'd managed so quickly to move from warning Rick never to lay a hand on her ever again to wanting him to touch her in every place he dared. She looked over her shoulder at him.

"We can't lie in bed all day. Carl will come looking for us." She said smirking. She was deliberately ignoring what he was actually saying, they both knew it.

"He's gone. You've got to let it go." Rick whispered.

Michonne's expression hardened and her back stiffened as they watched each other. "I can't, not yet. Not while he's out there."

"It doesn't matter."

"It does! He killed Andrea." She stood to avoid his hand reaching for her again.

"I know she was your friend, she was mine too."

"So then, you know."

Rick sighed.

 _He did know_. She could see it on his face, in the way his jaw clenched and unclenched.

"What is it between you and him?" He asked suddenly. There was almost a jealousy in his tone.

Michonne chuckled unexpectedly. She had never told anyone what transpired between The Governor and herself the night she helped the Prison group rescue Glenn and Maggie. It was none of their business. It hadn't even been Andrea's business when she butt into it.

"He only wanted you. I only want you."

Her eyes widened, stunned at the parallel. "I don't know what you think, but it's not that."

Rick's expression darkened. Despite the fact that they didn't need to talk about every little thing, he didn't like it when she was cryptic. Michonne knew this.

She sighed deeply, grabbing her bra and shirt from the place on the floor they'd tossed it earlier.

Michonne was grateful that Rick had turned down The Governor's offer at the time, although she still wasn't exactly sure why he had. They hadn't really known each other yet and certainly didn't owe each other anything but he still did it. And quite obviously, Rick still didn't know why The Governor had even asked in the first place. Perhaps it was time for them both to finally clear the air.

"I'm the one that took his eye…and killed his daughter."

She picked up her pants and dragged them up each leg.

"Michonne." She stopped to look at Rick's surprised expression.

She sighed, relenting.

"The girl was already dead. He kept her chained up in a closet. He liked keeping dead things." She thought back to his aquarium of heads, trophies. The sick bastard.

"The eye was because he touched me."

They exchanged morbid smiles at their private little joke.

"Now he's alone. Out there. I can find him."

"You don't need to."

"I do." Michonne said emphatically, pulling her leather vest on and stretching across the bed to kiss Rick. His hands framed her face as he deepened their kiss.

She pulled back from him abruptly, straighten to her full height with a hand on her hip. "Nice try."

"Had to." He gave her a sly smile and shrugged.

She chuckled, turning to grab her katana from the corner of the bed where she'd propped it and swung the strap over her head.

"Well, I have to." She admitted almost apologetically.

What she couldn't admit was that it wasn't only The Governor she was out searching for.

She'd been scouring every drugstore, doctor's office and apothecary from here virtually to Macon to no avail. After having spent a month pretending not to know what was going on, she'd spent the past three weeks frantically trying to find the pills that could do something about it. So far nothing, although ironically nearly every place she'd found was still stocked with at least a single bottle of folic acid.

Michonne tried not to take it as a sign.

She felt guilty enough as it was. All things being equal, she would have rejoiced at the chance to be a mother again. At the opportunity to give Rick another child and Carl and Judith a sibling. But things were far from equal. The last woman to give birth in the Prison had died. Judith wasn't even a year old yet. And since the illness had swept through the Prison, they'd lost the only doctor they had.

God love Hershel but Michonne wasn't Flame. She needed a real doctor not a horse vet to get through this.

"I need to be done with it, so I can breathe." She admitted, thinking both of spoken and unspoken things.

Rick nodded reluctantly, looking somewhat dejected as he sat in the center of the bed, his elbows propped up on his knees. "Be careful out there."

"I always am." She said repeating the words of their ritual and taking comfort in them.

She walked to the heavy door and pushed it open.

"Michonne?"

She turned back to look at him. "Don't worry. I can take care of myself."

"Yes, but not alone. You don't have to. Not anymore."

"I know." She said softly stepping out into the hall.

* * *

 _You lied! You promised I wouldn't be alone again._

She accused him yet again in her mind. It felt good to have someone, something to focus the anger and fear on.

How long had it been? Hours, she was sure. Unceasing hours as the contractions grew closer and closer together until they were nearly on top of one another. The urge to bear down grew stronger with every wave.

 _Just calm down 'Chonne_. He said in his soft, easy Southern drawl.

"You absolute bastard! I was right. I should never have let you touch me." Michonne growled low in her throat as a contraction moved through her.

WHY AREN'T YOU WORKING?

Earlier in the night she'd made herself a tea of Evening Primrose root and petals as her grandmother had long ago taught her. She remembered having thought she'd died and gone to heaven when she found the patch growing wild along the side on the interstate. Now however, she wasn't sure she was experiencing any benefits. It was supposed to make the contractions easier to endure but she wasn't certain anything short of a gunshot to the head was going to accomplish that.

"Dammit!" She said out loud.

On her hands and knees over the towels she rocked and groaned through successive waves. Her legs trembled beneath her as the pressure in her lower abdomen and back grew. Her body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat even as she shivered slightly in the cold room.

"Please, please," she moaned as the pain intensified. "I can't do this alone."

 _… but you're not alone. Not anymore. You don't have to be_. Rick's words echoed in her mind. _We got your back._

 _I got you, girl._ She distinctly heard Daryl say then.

 _Don't worry, kid._ Hershel's soothing voice reassured her. _You can start whenever you're ready._

 _Michonne, you can do this_. Lori comforted her. _You are so strong, stronger than I was, and so is this baby._

Michonne screamed, her eyes filled with tears and glazed over as she succumbed to the blinding agony and let her body take full control.

Finally, after long hours, just as the first rays of light beamed in through the windows, the baby's head crowned and minutes later the rest of her body slipped into the world as Michonne caught her in her hands.

The tiny thing yowled, its small hands balled into outraged fists, shaking furiously. Michonne wiped the child down with a concoction she'd devised of water and the witch hazel and iodine she'd found in the pharmacy, as the baby protested vehemently.

Tears of joy, relief and exhaustion streamed down Michonne's face as she looked her daughter over from head to toe. Of course, she was a little small, but otherwise perfect. Michonne swaddled her in towels and blankets.

"Thank you." She said out loud again and again.

Not only to God with whom she hadn't spoken in a very long time, but to Rick and Hershel and Daryl and Lori, her mother and grandmother and Mike and all the people she'd called upon throughout the night just to give her enough strength to make it. They'd all come, none had forsaken her. And for that reason, she had this amazing miracle wrapped tight in her arms that stared intensely back at her with large, round unblinking eyes.

Seeing then that she'd caught her mother's attention, the baby wailed robustly.

"Okay, okay. I see you've got a good set of lungs on you. Let's see what we can do about getting you fed." Michonne said bringing the bundle to her breast.

…And beginning to worry about a whole new problem.


	5. Chapter 5

_There was someone in the house_.

Michonne could hear them moving around even floors away. She looked down at the palette beside her. The baby was still asleep, as she had been also until a moment ago.

There were muffled words. It was more than one person in the house. Michonne listened carefully to see if she could triangulate precisely how many and where they were.

She heard a few voices as they milled around shouting things to each other.

 _Tamed? Blamed? Claimed?_

Was that what they were saying? _What the hell did that even mean?_

One of them was on the stairs now. Michonne looked down at her daughter sleeping. Inching ever so slowly and quietly – she'd become expert at that –she pulled herself out of the crawl space and looked around. Though the attic clearly looked inhabited, she gone to a lot of trouble to make sure there were no tell-tale signs of her downstairs. She crept to the hatch door to the floor below and slowly bolted it shut. She listened again carefully.

"Looky here, looky here, a camera."

"Claimed!" Another voice said immediately.

"Len, I have it in my hand."

"I don't care, I claimed it."

Michonne heard a violent scuffle follow that instantly pulled her attention back to the infant on the palette, who still slept undisturbed. By her guess, it was about one o'clock in the afternoon. Little Aria wouldn't necessarily wake up until three…unless something woke her. Up until now Michonne had felt a lot of guilt for what she was doing, but this development confirmed that it had been entirely necessary.

Against, what she was sure was any and all medical wisdom, Michonne had been drugging her child.

If she had any hope of leaving that house before Aria was old enough to be reasoned with, she knew she had to find a way to extend the girl's sleep intervals from the normal two hour windows, to at least four to six. And after puzzling through it for a few anxious days when she was almost certain walkers two streets over could hear the girl's screams, Michonne had come upon a solution.

Once a day, about an hour before breastfeeding, Michonne drank a finger of the awful rot-gut she'd found. The uninterrupted slumber it provided allowed her time to bundle the little girl in a sack she wore across her chest and forage for a few hours without fear of detection. It had pained her to do it, knowing that in an effort to save her child she might be slowly killing her. Ultimately, she thought back to the days when pregnant women of her grandmother's time drank and smoked without worry, and prayed that her little one would be as robust.

"Oh, c'mon! Joe?"

"What am I, your fucking mommy?" A third voice said. "If Len claimed it, it's his. Now, I'm gonna go see if Harley found anything upstairs."

 _So there were at least four of them,_ Michonne held her breath.

It was potentially okay, the attic was inconspicuous. The retracting ladder that led to it was tucked away in a closet. But if these people stuck around long enough, it was only a matter of time.

Moving as slowly and quietly as she could, Michonne gathered her things. One of the many reasons that she'd finally settled on this house so long ago had been because the clean, spacious, insulated attic had a second means of egress. Along the westerly wall, there lay a securely bolted trellis that well-trained climbing roses clung to. Out the window and across the roof of the house's kitchen extension, she could make it to the trellis and down to the ground undetected. It was a route only for emergencies, such as the building being overrun but this certainly constituted an emergency of the other kind.

"Har, you up here?" The deep, graveled voice was much closer now.

"Yeah, I'm taking a shit." The other voice called back from the master bathroom.

"You gonna be a while?"

"Maybe. There's a whole tub full of water up here. Claimed. Might take a bath."

 _Shit_. She thought. _That was almost the entirety of her fresh water reserves. What she dipped into for drinking, washing things in the sink and wiping down the baby._

The other voice, Joe, chuckled. "Well then, don't empty it out. I might take one after you."

"You gonna leave me in peace with my book or what?"

Joe laughed again and left the room, coming closer to the end of the hall and the attic closet. She heard him whistling as he opened and closed doors along the hallway, clearly unafraid of any lurking walkers. Almost as if he knew Michonne had taken care of that for him. Just before the closet he stopped and cocked his pistol. Michonne paused with the rope in one hand and her hiking pack in the other.

She gingerly laid the items on the floor and reached for her katana. It would take him a moment to shoot out the lock and push up into the attic, but she still wanted to be ready for him. That moment felt like it lasted hours before she heard the last bedroom's door squeak open and Joe enter. He fell heavily onto the bed and the springs protested loudly beneath him. It was a child's bed in a child's room.

 _Why couldn't he have just stayed in the master bedroom on the other side of the house?_

Michonne stuffed her coat and the baby's meager things, a pacifier, bottle, cloth diapers and the few articles of clothes she'd been able to find into the back pack. After she was certain she'd created ample padding between the hard bottles, cans and objects on the bottom and the opening at the top, she carefully scooped up her sleeping infant and put her in the pack as well. She made a face and a small noise that ended up being a burp before she settled comfortably in her new space. At three weeks old, she was still small enough to fit well anywhere and malleable enough to allow it.

Very carefully, Michonne lightly closed the top flap and swung the pack over her shoulders. Taking her katana in one hand and a length of rope in the other, she pushed the window open and stepped out on the shingled roof. Immediately, under her weight the first shingle moved, slipping out from under her. She hadn't accounted for this. She'd never actually gone out on the roof to know whether it was sound and could bear her weight. She could have kicked herself. Who knows how many years of disrepair this thing had been under even before everything ended?

She sighed. There was nothing for it now. She couldn't wait to see if these "Claimers" would discover her hiding place or if her daughter would eventually wake up and lead them to it.

Michonne stepped out her other foot and the roof seemed to bear her. Moving slowly with her side pressed to the aluminum siding, she shuffled along the roof making as little noise as she could. Once at the end, she took off her pack and looped the rope through the straps. Once she was certain the knot was secure, she lowered the heavy pack, inch by painful inch onto the small hedge below. It was only a few feet but her whole life balanced on whether it reached the ground securely.

As it did, Michonne released the rope, allowing it to fall alongside the pack, hidden safely behind the hedge. Only then did Michonne exhale.

 _So far so good_. She silently told her constant companions.

Gripping the corner of the house, she swung her leg out to reach the trellis then she paused. Someone was coming out the backdoor of the house. Michonne pulled back flattening herself against the side of the house.

"Stupid fucker. What's he gonna do with a camera? He knew I was a photographer. That I'd been looking for one." The man grumbled popping a cigarette into his mouth and cupping it to light the end. "I mean, for fuck's sake!

She watched as he took a long pull on his smoke and looked around the yard. Michonne pulled back again just as he turned to inspect the back of the house. She prayed he couldn't see her, just barely around the upstairs corner, from his vantage point.

She stood there, possibly the longest moments of her life, before she dared to look again. He had walked up to the fence line probably curious to find two armless walkers chained to it and apparently abandoned. He toyed with them for a moment then peered over the back fence at the man-made lake behind it. Another reason she'd chosen this house, in this neighborhood. The houses on this cul-de-sac had been bounded on one side by a large water feature and on the other by a golf course. Making for only one direction from which walkers –or people –could approach undetected.

Suddenly, the baby started to rustle in the pack. Michonne heard her a moment before he did. She leaned back again, her heart running riot in her chest. She could hear him coming back, approaching the hedge. The leaves crunched beneath his feet as he made giant strides forward across the lawn, no doubt excited by what he thought he would find there. Michonne heard his gun cock and couldn't wait any longer.

Without knowing exactly what she planned to do, Michonne stepped out from her hiding place against the wall and leapt. The Claimer barely had time to look up and turn his gun toward her, before she was on him. Her katana sliced first through air and then through bone and sinew before he could send the message to his finger to pull the trigger.

She landed on the bad ankle, only newly healed and rolled with it, head over feet to absorb the impact before popping back up. She turned quickly and ran him through the back before he could utter even a word of astonishment. He gasped softly, the sound like a balloon slowly deflating. Using her foot to push him off her blade, he fell first to his knees and then on to his face in front of her. She flicked the blood off her sword and dropped to a crouch. She snatched the gun out of his amputated hand and pointed it at the doorway. After a moment of waiting, no one came rushing out of the kitchen door. She and her daughter were still safe. Putting the gun in the back of her waistband, she rose.

 _Not bad_. She gave herself one brief second to bask in it. She'd never done anything like that before.

Carl had once called her a ninja. This was the first time she actually believed it.

Reaching carefully into the hedges, she grabbed her pack and daughter and limped toward the fence line.

Michonne's breasts ached. It was almost time for her little girl's lunch.

* * *

WAKE UP!

Michonne's eyes opened instantly as if someone had screamed that right in her ear as opposed to it coming from one of the ghosts in her head. She looked around startled. Immediately, she checked the baby.

She was fine, napping quietly- for a change- beside her. Once again for the umpteenth time in the last month, she thanked God.

 _How long had she been trapped in this car?_ Three days she thought, although at this point who could be sure. The minutes stretched into hours, the hours into days until they really did begin to blur.

To keep those Claimers at her back, Michonne had done something she previously thought not only foolish but unthinkable. She'd traveled at night, all through the night the first night after she left the house. Unfortunately, she'd lost both Fido and Spot to the need to travel light and fast. So that first night she didn't even have her camouflage. That she made it through the night was something of a miracle she knew. It helped that she stayed on the shoulder of main roads and that the moon was three-quarters full.

The next day she'd found a sign along the train tracks proclaiming "Sanctuary for All, Community for All. Those who arrive survive."

It took three days to get there. _She should have known better._

Michonne saw the fire in the sky long before she got there but went anyway. Just to bear witness. Walkers roamed within the gates while some parts burned and others smoldered. It was like seeing the Prison all over again. If she hadn't known definitively that The Governor was dead and gone she might have thought this was his handiwork. She sat by the tree line and cried. She knew she shouldn't have gotten her hopes up but she couldn't help it. It was the baby's fault, Aria made her hopeful for the future.

There was a small path leading away, Michonne took it not knowing where it would go. Perhaps she could catch up with any survivors. From the footprints leading away there seemed as if there might be quite a few. Daryl had taught her about that too. It was possible things were still on the upswing.

Michonne walked later into the evening than she dared for the first time since she'd slipped the Claimers, hoping to see someone, something – a distant flashlight, a campfire – anything. But they were entirely alone. Eventually, dispirited, she decided to stop. There was a roomy SUV with only one walker inside, a cooler with a couple cans of hot grape-flavored soda and one large can of beef stew that had rolled under the driver's seat.

As far as she was concerned, it might as well have been the Hilton. After three days of eating dandelion and cicada broth, stale tortilla snack chips and sections from a couple half-rotted persimmons she'd found in a late-blooming tree, Michonne was ready for some 'prepared' food. Deciding to forgo the pinch of rot gut, both she and Aria fell asleep comfortably on the floor of the back row to the sound of the crickets chirping.

They woke, however, to the jostling of the van by scores of walkers. Though the windows were nearly blacked out by their tinting and almost two years' worth of dust, Michonne was reluctant to get up and take a look. It was enough to know they were all around, passing, bumping, moaning. Michonne's blood ran cold.

And then Aria started to cry.


	6. Chapter 6

For the first two days of her life, Michonne's daughter had gone by many names and none of them seemed to fit.

She was 'Deborah' first, after Michonne's long dead mother. Michonne had lost her mother as a teen, and while that fact used to make her sad, it now comforted her that the woman hadn't lived to see all of this.

For about two hours on the first day, she was 'Lori Marie' named after both of Michonne's spirit-guides through the arduous process of her pregnancy—her grandmother, whose sage words and herbal remedies she had relied upon and her patron saint of post-apocalyptic pregnancy. Then, for a moment the little girl was 'Andrea', for both her son and the woman who was her first friend in the After. The two people who convinced her there could still be more to this life. After that, she'd briefly cycled through every name Michonne had ever thought pretty since she was about thirteen years old. None of them fit. Sitting around for hours on end staring at the squalling girl, marveling at her head full of curly light brown hair, intense dark eyes and full pouty lips, somehow didn't help Michonne's inspiration process either.

It was only in the midst of her most cynical moment that she'd happened upon her daughter's name.

Whether or not Michonne could be confident that anything else was normal, she knew definitively that her daughter's lungs were perfectly healthy. In those first three days, Aria cried for hour-stretches. When she was awake, she was crying. Andre had never been a fussy baby and so Michonne was at a loss. She didn't know what to do and could only hope that being in the attic of a house on a cul-de-sac in the back of a subdivision with a lake behind it was enough to keep things …or people from hearing her.

Finally, Michonne remembered the bottle of whiskey when she realized that what she really needed was a good, stiff drink for her frayed nerves.

"Has your aria ended, Milady?" Michonne asked her daughter finally as she began to settle down, drinking her spiked milk.

Michonne looked down into the baby's contented face as she rooted and clutched her mother's finger tightly.

"Do you know I hate opera? Always sounded like a bunch of screaming to me." She confided in the little girl, whose eyes rolled back in her head with satisfaction. "Andre's dad took me to see La bohème for my birthday once. …And we left by 'Quando m'en vo'."

Michonne laughed then as the little girl's interest seemed to grow. She held her mother's gaze with keen eyes as she continued to suckle.

"Yup. He called me classless. Said, I couldn't even make it through the second act. We left the Cobb Center and went straight to see the new Star Trekmovie. What can I say?" Michonne asked tugging the little girl's foot. "I guess I just don't like arias."

The baby stopped nursing and smiled. It was the first one. Michonne knew the doctors claimed it was gas, but in that moment, it didn't seem like it.

"What? Aria?" Michonne asked incredulous. "You like that?"

The baby's smile grew and then there was a little burb and some milk that returned, flowing past her lips and down into the creases of her neck. She still seemed delighted though as she watched her mother.

"Aria Grimes?" Michonne scrunched her nose distastefully. "It's not great, kid. Has no flow."

She thought on one of her favorite names from way back in Sunday School, a lifetime ago. Ironically, the name of the first woman in the Bible to die in childbirth. Haha. "The Wandering Ewe", which sure sounded like her and her daughter right now -two lost lambs.

"Aria Rachel Grimes…yeah, that's better."

It seemed her daughter agreed. Just then, the smile slipped off Aria's face as she fell into the first sound sleep of her entire life.

"Silence." Michonne sighed with relief. "The first Aria I've ever liked."

* * *

 _Silence. Finally_.

After two days of moaning outside, from walkers attracted to the early intermittent crying, there was finally silence.

Michonne wasn't foolish enough to think the walkers were all gone. She knew they weren't but the majority were.

Aria had only cried sporadically for fifteen minute intervals but it might as well have been hours to the herd that gathered outside banging on the windows and doors, running their bodies into the vehicle repeatedly in an effort to get inside. Michonne rocked and cajoled and begged until the baby finally saw reason, aided by a sizable dosage of whiskey. At long last, Michonne had finally finished those nearly 2 liters of hard liquor she'd been sparingly doling out to herself.

 _Three days trapped in a car._

Luckily, it was winter or they would have suffocated. As it was, during the nights they would have frozen were it not for the artificial heat provided by alcohol and the emergency blanket that was tucked in the spare tire well with a half-empty emergency kit and a flare gun. In the day, Michonne took carefully from her dwindling reserves of food and prayed the walkers would lose interest. By the night of the second day, it seemed they had. Laying her head down next to her daughter that night, Michonne knew they had roughly a day left. Her water supply would be depleted within the next twenty-four hours and they would be forced to escape or die trying. She refused to let herself become one of those walkers she used to find, starved to death and trapped in their cars.

WAKE UP!

The voice said again as she nearly slipped back to sleep. Her eyes popped open again. She felt so groggy. Something about spending the days sleeping only made her want to sleep more. That is, after the acute cabin-fever had worn off. Michonne stretched and sat up.

 _Time to do this._ Carol encouraged. _It's gonna work._

Michonne had thought about it long and hard during her confinement and already had a plan formulated. Easing onto the back seat, mindful of not waking the girl, she listened again. There was still some shuffling and moaning outside but the crowd seemed decidedly thinner. Tucking the flare gun into her waist and her katana over her shoulder, Michonne climbed over the seats into the second row. Then, using as much discreet force as she could muster pushed the sunroof up. It popped open giving her her first taste of truly fresh air in days. It was bracingly crisp as she pulled herself through.

As if they had been turned on by an invisible switch, the walkers that had lingered around, roughly twenty or thirty in number, turned and made for the truck. She knew she had to do this quickly before more came out of the trees attracted by the noise. Standing as close to the center of the car roof as she could, mindful that it was slightly concave and thus easy to slip off, Michonne methodically stabbed all the coming walkers through the skull with her katana. As they began to step on top of their compatriots to reach for her, she began sheering off their skull caps and kicking them back. When their number had dwindled somewhat, Michonne pointed up toward one of the drier looking conifers and shot a flare at it.

It ignited precisely as she hoped. It wasn't interesting enough for some compared to the live person on the car but it attracted a few. That's all she needed.

Sliding carefully down from the roof on the windshield, she killed the three walkers that waited in front of the engine block and hopped down onto the asphalt of the road. There were about ten left that posed an immediate danger. Michonne dispatched them quickly, back in her zone as the tree blazed beside her on the shoulder embankment. Her imagined companions cheered her on.

 _Good thing it hasn't rained for a while._ Maggie remarked.

With the walkers' attention divided Michonne made quick work of the rest, but watched with concern as the fire jumped from one tree to another nearby.

 _That was smart. You started a forest fire_. Glenn chided.

Michonne went back to the car and popped the truck door open. Climbing in the back, she grabbed her gear and then her daughter who was amazingly, wide awake but silent.

"Are we finally getting the hang of how this works, Little Miss Grimes?"

Tucked comfortably in the small gunny sack Michonne had fashioned out of a porous burlap granary bag she'd found, Aria burbled happily. The baby was slung across Michonne's midsection, nestled between her breasts, much as she had been in utero –apparently she liked it there.

"Let's go, Honey." Michonne said stepping around the multitude of bodies that littered the roadside and walking deliberately in the opposite direction from the burning trees that were attracting attention. "We got some people to find."


	7. Chapter 7

She came upon a church two days later.

A relatively young man, still after all these years, dressed in his priestly vestments, sat dejectedly on the steps. The church entrance was fortified with dozens of large spikes driven into the ground- for keeping walkers away, she supposed. It would do nothing for human beings. Though it was doubtful that was a problem. To Michonne's way of thinking, it made no sense to sit on the steps like a waiting buffet, but maybe that was just her. It wouldn't be much of a walker meal anyway, since there was no one in his congregation. And there probably hadn't been for a while. The pastor seemed oblivious to it all either way, just giving his liturgy to the elements and the sky while clasping a bible between the hands that rested in his lap.

Michonne watched him for over an hour before approaching. _He was clearly crazy, but did that also mean he was dangerous?_ For her child's sake, she had to know.

That was what she tried to sort out before coming out from behind the trees. She watched for other, unseen people or weapons, and after a while, she watched for anything at all, besides a lonely man who laughed and cried a little at his own jokes. It became quickly clear though, the priest was utterly alone and afraid of his own shadow. Every noise he thought he heard made him jump. Only once had it actually been something to be afraid of, a feral dog. Still, he managed to scare it off by lobbing his heavy bible at it.

Michonne chuckled quietly at his expense.

 _He may be crazy as a loon and somewhat sacrilegious, but it seemed, he was also something of a pragmatist._ She figured she could handle that in a new companion. _And in this world, who was without their flaws?_

* * *

Michonne's fingers ached from kneading but she didn't stop.

She'd never been the type of girl to give her man a back rub after a long day of work. Never one to expect a back rub either, although Mike had obliged on occasion during the last few months of her pregnancy. Still, it wasn't her thing. But somehow this seemed like a special occasion. What else could you do for a man who single-handedly kept the entire Prison from being overrun with only his thirteen-year-old as backup?

 _A good back rub seemed the least._

"Good?" She asked as she worked the tight knots in Rick's shoulders.

"Yeah." He practically hummed, his eyes at half-mast.

It had been a long, hard day for everyone, herself included, but Rick she knew particularly, had been through a lot.

Everyone had been aware for a while that someone was feeding the walkers, luring them to one particular part of the fence line in such numbers that their crush had weakened the restraints. Still, they had since been reinforced, so no one expected that an entire part of the fence would just suddenly give way. Or that it would happen when there was practically no one around to do anything about it.

So, it had been just Rick and Carl, holding off a horde, on their own.

Illness had decimated the Prison numbers and those still alive were either recuperating or out on a run, like she was with Daryl, Bob and Tyreese. No one was prepared. And that was a wake-up call. The idea of Rick and Carl struggling against a herd of walkers all by themselves because she was too much of a coward to stick around had been a bigwake-up call. Of course that wasn't quite what happened, but to her it may as well have been. It just seemed like recently, it didn't matter what the run was for, exactly. If it meant that people were leaving the Prison, she was up for joining them. The guilt she now felt about her behavior was palpable.

"Better?" She asked finally, pausing before her hands ached as much as his shoulders did.

"Hmm, yeah, thanks." Rick said as if she'd woken him from a trance. He took her hands from his shoulders and used them to guide her off the small bed, around to face him. She let herself be led, easing from behind him.

He lay down and scooted until his back touched the wall, pulling her down with him. Michonne couldn't help feeling a little uncomfortable, though she still didn't resist. They'd never done this on the block before, potentially in full view of anyone who chose to walk past his cell right then. They hadn't discussed it yet either, outting themselves. Although, she supposed, given what she knew was coming, they'd probably need to do that soon anyway.

"Don't go, okay?" Rick said then.

Michonne sighed deeply. Both Rick and Daryl had been uncharacteristically vocal about their feelings on her frequent runs. And since she could hardly be completely honest about what was keeping her away for weeks at a time, she could only sit there and take it. All the biting comments about her absences, all the sulking when she was about to leave, it became harder and harder to withstand the onslaught. Even Carl was beginning to get moody about it.

"Daryl and I were talking..." Michonne admitted as she settled facing him, her head across from his on his pillow. Rick draped an arm over her, his hand possessively claiming her hip and thigh.

"You and Daryl actually talk? Coulda fooled me." He smiled drowsily.

"Oh, har-har." She retorted but smiled back anyway. "…The Governor's trail has gone cold."

Rick looked intently at her then, searching her face in the semi-dark, for something.

"What do you think it means?" He asked through a yawn, his voice barely above a whisper.

Michonne shrugged. "I don't know. I wanna believe it means he's dead but I know that's not it."

"Can you live with that?" He asked seriously, although it seemed to her like some sort of joke or riddle. "Not knowing?"

"Do I have a choice?" It seemed like she'd run out of choices in every avenue of her life. She didn't like feeling that powerless. She wasn't accustomed to it.

Up until now, she'd had perfectly plausible excuses why she needed to be away. Still, she knew the truth. It wasn't just The Governor and it wasn't just the prospect of this pregnancy. It was the family. It was the idea of linking her life inextricably to all of these people. Not just Rick, Carl and Judith, but choosing a life that included Daryl and Glenn and Maggie. It was being with Hershel and Beth, Tyreese, Sasha and the others. It was growing accustomed to a sense of community and belonging that her body almost rejected. Michonne had known from her first day here that she didn't want any part of it. Not really. The reliable food and shelter were cool but she didn't want or need the people. And now with this baby coming, whether she liked it or not, here was a tangible representation of that attachment. It was too much.

 _All of it._

"Michonne?"

Michonne was lost in her own thoughts and hadn't heard him. "What?"

"That mean you're sticking around a while?" He asked again, giving her bottom a little lascivious squeeze.

Michonne smiled in spite of her perturbation, covering his hand with her own and intertwining their fingers.

She had warned Tyreese that anger and stupidity got you killed, but they weren't the only things that did. Attachment and sentiment had a way of clouding your judgment and weakening your resolve too. Leaving you open to grievous attack or serious injury. Still, here she was, rubbing her man's back, holding his hand and thanking whatever deity existed out there that nothing had happened to him or his son. It was clearer than ever love and friendship were a liability, Mike and Andrea had taught her that…the hard way.

 _This was not where she wanted to be. Yet here she was._

"I suppose."

"You sound thrilled." Rick quipped quietly.

"It's not that."

"Then what?" He yawned again.

"How can I know everyone I care about is safe, if he's still out there?"

"You can't. We're not. I'll tell you the same as Carl, we're never safe." The levity of the past few minutes vanished. Rick's voice grew grave.

"How can you believe that when you have them?" Michonne asked dreading the thought of bringing another child into a situation like that.

"It's because of them that I have to believe that." Rick pulled her closer to him.

Michonne rolled then so that her back was to Rick's chest and she could fit into the curve of his body snugly, a little spoon to his big one. He swept her locks over her shoulder and put his mouth on the nape of her neck, softly.

She contemplated his words for a moment in silence. "Then, how could you possibly be okay with me not looking for him anymore?"

"'Cuz it's always gonna be something. And we just have to handle it as it comes. Not just you. _We._ Handle. It. _All of us_. There's strength in numbers." Rick said directly into her ear in a husky whisper.

She closed her eyes willing herself to believe him. It just sounded like some platitude to Michonne, but she could tell by his tone, Rick believed it.

 _Perhaps in time she could too?_ Michonne shrugged again resignedly. _Again, what choice did she have?_

"I've been trying to tell you this. You're one of us. Don't go it alone. _Be one of us_."

He pulled her into his chest, settling in more behind her.

Michonne mulled it for long minutes. If there was ever a time to just say it, to tell Rick she was pregnant, this was it. In the quietude of this moment and in the sentiment of this conversation.

"Rick…" she started, holding her breath and beginning to break his embrace in order to turn and face him again.

"Don't go." He whispered again into her neck, tightening his arm as he drifted into unconsciousness.

"I already said I wouldn't."

"No, I meant tonight." He muttered.

It was the last coherent thing he said before his breaths grew shallow and she lost him to sleep.

Michonne closed her eyes and tried to draw comfort from the idea of her baby born into a fierce family of warriors, all ready and willing to do battle for one another.

* * *

Unless she planned to listen to this guy's homily to the squirrels, Michonne had waited long enough, she decided.

She walked directly out of the bushes toward where he sat startling him, which was her intention. The priest tried scrambling to his feet, tripping over his robes as he tried to retreat up into the safety of his sanctum.

"I don't have anything!" He yelled back at her, still trying to get inside.

Michonne strode across the lawn separating them not wanting to be on the other side of the door when he got it closed.

"Please, please, I swear," He stuttered and sputtered over his words, cringing back when she put her hand up to keep the door open.

 _How did someone like this manage to survive two years into the end of days?_

Up until this very moment, Michonne had been nearly certain all the weak, broken and otherwise less-hearty people of the world had been quite literally devoured by now.

 _Was this an act?_ She wondered again.

 _If it was, he'd discover quickly she was not the one_. Maybe if he was particularly lucky, he'd live to tell the tale.

She eyed him as he tripped his way further into the nave, pleading for his life. His light brown skin growing red and sweaty as he bumbled around.

"Padre, calm down." She said after closing the door to the chapel behind her. She stood in the vestibule reluctant to come closer in case he wasn't just cowardly but also erratic.

It felt strange to be speaking to a corporeal person again. She'd been talking to her ghosts for so long it felt odd that someone real might actually answer.

"M-my people are coming back. I won't be alone here for long. P-please just take what you want and go."

Michonne looked around the cool, dark, clearly empty sanctuary. Unless she was in the market for some religious artifacts, there was really nothing to have.

"I don't want anything from you." She said as soothingly as possible. "Just calm down."

"—Because I don't have anything! They'll be back soon!"

"Father! Stop!" Michonne put up both her hands, jostling the baby who cried out in protest once.

The priest looked down at her midsection in surprise, only just realizing that she had something there. Michonne looked down too, peeking into the sack. Her daughter blinked up at her, gurgling. She'd fed her while they waited in the woods sussing out the priest, so this was just Aria being her new mellow self. Michonne smiled for a moment before looking back at the stunned cleric.

"Y-you have a baby in there?" He asked hesitantly emerging from behind the pew where he cowered.

 _Careful, he's a fool if he imagines that makes you any less of a threat than you were a minute ago, and idiots are dangerous._ Rick's voice reminded her.

 _But that's his mistake to make_. Carol added.

Michonne didn't speak, she just continued to watch him closely.

"I'm sorry. I'm Father Gabriel." He said laying his hand across his chest before reaching as if to shake hers. "And you are?"

Michonne still didn't reply, instead looking around the room for other exits or still other people, possibly laying in wait.

The priest took a deep breath calming himself. He looked at her, seeming to take her all in finally.

Michonne had no doubt she looked formidable. With her trench coat, hiking pack and katana, she looked like one of the wandering samurai from her favorite old movies. The baby threw off the look somewhat but only if you actually realized Aria was there, hidden among her clothes.

"Please, please sit down. Are you hungry? Do you need something to drink? Either of you?" He said backing down the aisle toward the altar. "I have water and the group found some cans of concentrated apple juice. I could open one of those?"

"I thought you didn't have anything?" Michonne asked easing the pack off her shoulder.

"Ah, well." He paused realizing his mistake. "Well, you know. I didn't. Not before the group came. But then we went to the food pantry—"

"There's a food pantry?" Michonne didn't think she'd ever heard better news.

"Um, there was. But we got most of the things from there that were still edible. It's all here now. Well, some of it's here. Some, they took with them." The priest spoke quickly like one of those dolls that needed winding up at first but then wouldn't stop chatting.

"Your group?" She asked, following him slowly up the aisle. She suddenly wandered if his "group" was a figment of his imagination like hers was.

"Does the baby need anything? The pantry doubled as a Goodwill. Let's see, we found diapers and wipes, formula, pacifiers…"

"It's okay, she's fine." Michonne couldn't help but be amused by his sudden burst of enthusiasm.

"It's a girl!" He said taking a step toward her then to look before thinking better of it and stepping back.

Michonne put a protective hand across her child and stepped back simultaneously.

"I-it's just that our other baby is a girl too. That's all. I just thought it was a happy coincidence. No need to go out looking for blue stuff right?" He began stammering again, conceivably noting the extreme caution in her expression.

"Other baby?" Michonne gripped the head of the pew in front of her. "What other baby?"

She knew it was stupid. The feeling that surged in her chest. This was proof that her daughter was not going to be the last baby born to the world. And that she certainly wasn't the only one…even if it had felt like it.

"The group leader. He has a baby daughter…and a son. But the boy is a preteen."

Michonne's heart lurched. If she wasn't gripping something already she might have collapsed. The priest was still speaking but all she could hear was the blood rushing to her head, making her feel light-headed. She reflexively placed her hand across her daughter. Their daughter.

 _He was still alive. They were still alive_.

"H-how many? In your group?" It was Michonne's turn to stammer. She sat down then before she could fall down.

"About 12, I think."

 _Twelve_. Tears came to her eyes. _Twelve still alive._ It was almost like her bones knew which ones too.

"Miss? Are you okay?" Gabriel asked his expression turning sober.

"And where are they?"

"Well, I don't understand completely but two of them were apparently taken to a hospital in Atlanta. They went to get them. I stayed behind with the boy and the baby."

"They're here?" Michonne leap back to her feet, startling the baby who whined. "Carl and Judith are here?"

The Father's eyes widened hearing her children's names. "You know Rick?"

"They're here?" Michonne looked around demanding, "Where?"

Gabriel eyed her suspiciously again and then after a moment said reluctantly, "In the Rectory."

He pointed in which direction. Michonne didn't feel as if her legs were strong enough to carry her down the long center aisle to where she needed to be.

"Carl! Carl!" She just cried out loudly from where she was, wiping the sudden stream of tears from her eyes with her sleeve.

Off to the left, an inconspicuous wooden door creaked open slowly and then there he was, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looked older, taller, more angular, his hair was a bit longer too, but it was still her boy.

"Michonne!" He said clearly as astonished to be laying eyes on her as she was on him.

He threw the door wide and ran to her, his hat falling off in the process.

He ran into her embrace before she could stop him, only narrowly missing Aria because of Michonne's arm between them.

"Careful," She said stepping back and checking to make sure the baby was okay.

Carl looked down in confusion.

"You'll squash your sister."

"My–?" He repeated bewildered.

Michonne put both hands under Aria and pushed her up closer to the top of the sack presenting her to her brother. She began to cry then, upset to be displaced.

Carl peered over the lip of the burlap and looked down at his sister and then back up at Michonne. A large smile broke out across his face.

"You, you did know about your father and me?" It had never, until that moment, occurred to Michonne to ask.

Carl cocked his head to the side, a mirror image of his father, and smiled. "C'mon, everyone knew."

Michonne couldn't even unpack that information. She was too overwhelmed.

"I mean, if they didn't know before, they know now. He hasn't been doing so good since you..." Carl's face grew grim and he trailed off as if he didn't know how to finish the sentence.

"What's her name?" He asked suddenly over her increasingly ear-piercing cries.

"Aria." Michonne answered, bouncing her up and down to calm her. "Aria Rachel."

They just smiled at each other for another long moment before Michonne grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back into her. She kissed him on the forehead and smelled his hair, desperate to stay in this moment with two of her children.

Suddenly, there was a brief honk outside.

"They're back." Gabriel announced.

Michonne looked at the priest as if he'd just materialized out of nowhere in front of her. And for a moment it felt as if he did, she was so caught up.

"I've got to go get Judith." Carl said letting Michonne go and running back into the Rectory for his sister.

Gabriel walked back down the aisle toward the front to get the doors.

 _All these months of being alone._

Months of thinking that there would never be another place she could call home again. That she could ever feel safe again. All the fear and doubt extinguished. Just that quickly. In the time it took to know that Rick, Carl and Judith, Maggie and Glenn, Daryl and the others could still be alive, Michonne felt like she could breathe again. Exhale finally, knowing that home was now and forever going to be wherever these people were. Her family of warriors, as committed to keeping her safe as she was to them.

 _The ghosts hadn't been lying. She and her daughter were not alone. They had never been._

Michonne turned toward the doors and Carl caught up to her with Judith on his hip. She'd gotten so big! Michonne smothered the little girl's face with kisses and tugged on her foot as she used to, which got her a smile and giggle for her trouble.

She smiled as Father Gabriel pulled back the doors, bathing the sanctuary in sunlight.

"C'mon, you guys." Michonne said happily, holding them to her as they walked down the aisle. "Let's go say hi to your Dad."

 **END.**


End file.
